


falling (with no one to catch me)

by voidandstars



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Chris Is Sad And I Feel Accomplished, Established Relationship, How Do I Tag, I'm Going to Hell, M/M, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 15:32:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4840796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidandstars/pseuds/voidandstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it was one thing to know the answer and a totally different thing to hear it</p>
            </blockquote>





	falling (with no one to catch me)

**Author's Note:**

> i am in hell

Chris's hands were shaking. He could hear his heartbeat over the whir of the blades, which was probably _not_ normal. He stared blankly out of the open door of the helicopter, dimly hearing one of the people who saved his friends shout - it was the only way they could be heard - at them, asking if they were okay. He, Ashley, and Matt were silent, and Sam, the only one that was willing to talk, gave her short, terse answers. After a few minutes of very little progress, the ranger stopped talking. For the next ten minutes, the only sound was the wind and the helicopter blades. Chris reached for Josh's hand and only found Ashley. He dimly registered her looking at him oddly, but all he noticed was that Josh _wasn't here_ , and he stared at his hand, shocked. His mind raced back to the fire, and everyone that was there - he remembered this terrifying, relief-filled moment with absolute clarity. Mike, Matt, Ashley, Jess, Emily, Sam- _where was Josh?_

"Where is Josh?" He mumbled, the first words to come out of him since the fire.

Sam blinked, looking at him. "I- what?"

"I said. Where. Is Josh," he said, words coming out choppily. He hoped for the best, be really did, but he knew the answer deep down.

Sam's eyes filled with sadness and regret. "Oh Chris... I..."

Chris's heart clenched with fear and his stomach flew into his throat. He dug his fingers into his knees, knuckles turning white. "Sam." He heard his voice crack, the last part of her name being lost to the steady thrum of the helicopter blades. He felt everyone looking at him,but he didn't care; his eyes were on Sam, who held the answer he was both terrified of and needed.

"Josh... He was... He didn't make it, Chris. I'm so, _so_ , sorry Chris, I..." The rest of her sentence faded into white noise, and his glasses fogged up so that everything was blurry; or maybe that was just the tears in his eyes, or a mixture of both. He felt like he was falling, falling, falling, even as he gripped the edges of the helicopter seat tight. He knew the answer, of course; but it's one thing to _know_ the answer, and a totally different thing to _hear_ it. He was looking at the floor of the helicopter, and then the back of his eyelids, and then his hands were covering his face and he dimly recognised his friends and the rangers voices but he didn't care because he was falling, falling into a finite void with no one there to catch him when he got to the inevitable bottom.

-

Nearly an hour and a half later and Chris was in a police interrogation room, still in a depressed, grief-filled daze. Before him they'd had- Mike and Ash? Right? He wasn't paying much attention. They'd had two people before him, presumably asking about the fire and how it started and such. He was sitting across from a professional looking lady, with a suit and a badge and a notebook and pen. He had looked at her briefly through his still slightly foggy glasses and red rimmed eyes- he'd stopped crying once they'd landed, but he was still on the verge of tears and refused to talk - only for his gaze to return to the table after a brief moment.

After several minutes of the - officer? ranger? who knows - patiently and quietly waiting for him to speak, she finally initiated conversation after realizing that he wasn't going to say a word. "Chris?" she asked. "Will you be okay with answering a few questions for me?"

Chris closed his eyes, took a deep, slightly shaky breath, and nodded. "Yeah. Um, sure, of- course."

"Thank you. Now, this might be hard, but i want you to answer as best and as honestly as you can."

Chris just nodded.

"So- right to the point- how did the fire start?"

The next forty five minutes were a blur of patient questions from the woman and detached, emotionless answers from Chris. The only way he found he wouldn't break down was if he made a wall between himself and his emotions. A few times emotion got through the weak points in his wall - his voice cracking pretty much every time he mentioned Josh, a flare of annoyance and slight anger going up when she suggested that the flamethrower guy was the one who did all this - but it still worked pretty well. Until the end, that is.

"Now, this - Josh, that you've mentioned. Your friends Michael and Ashley said he'd tried to hurt you and your friends. I understand tha-"

"Josh - no, he didn't want to hurt anybody!" Chris was temporarily snapped out of his emotional detached state. "He thought it was - it was just a prank. He didn't mean for anyone to get - get hurt or anything."

The officer raised an eyebrow. "Well, that isn't how your friends painted the story."

"They don't know him like I do. He did - he did a bad thing, yes. He wanted everyone to feel the - terror that his sisters felt. Before they disappeared. He was off his meds, and he wasn't thinking straight, and-"

"That isn't a valid excuse, Chris," she said softly. "People were hurt, and as far as I understand, it was mostly his fault-"

" _Don't you think i see that_ ," he hissed, anger seeping through the cracks of the fragile wall between emotion and reason. He pounded his fist on the table. "But he didn't mean to - he didn't _know_." Tears were welling up in his eyes and falling, falling like he was and he could only see a blurry outline of the officer. "He did a bad thing and now he's _missing_ \- he's _not here_ and he can be _dead_ and _it will be all my fault_." He heard her voice but it was like she was speaking some other language, and his words were tumbling out of his mouth like his tears were out of his eyes and he couldn't stop, he couldn't. "I just - _left him there_. I left him tied up in that _fucking_ shed with Mike, I left my boyfriend to _die_." He was full of anger and pain and grief and he couldn't hear anything but his own pounding heart and pain-filled words. His vision was blurry and there was a deep ache in his heart and he was sobbing and he wanted to _do something, anything_ to make the pain in his heart _go away._

So, he turned around and punched the brick wall _hard_. He heard a yell and he wasn't sure if it was him or the woman or both and he heard a crack and felt blood and a sharp, deep pain in his knuckles but he didn't care, _he didn't care_ , because it distracted him from that deep, dark pain in his heart and he punched the wall with his other hand and he punched again and again until he felt somebody pull him back and he crumpled, sobbing and with bleeding hands, onto the floor. He focused on his bruised and bloodied and broken knuckles, acting like that was what was making him cry instead of his bruised and bloodied and broken heart.

**Author's Note:**

> if it needs editing ill do it in the morning. i hope you like. comnents and kudos are appreciated c: and im chris-the-wendibro on tumblr if you want to reach me


End file.
